@oholteyE3GGM wrote:
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When I measure dimensions I get 216 inches. Or I can change the dimstyle and as I noted it will give me 18' -6.00"
However, I want 18.5'.
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AutoCAD works in "drawing units," which can represent anything desired. In standard Architectural- or Engineering-units usage, a drawing unit is an inch, and that's the only way to get it to do Dimensions in feet and inches format. If you get 216 [or 222 if it's really 18'-6"], if that means 216 drawing units, then you haven't truly changed your drawing for units to represent feet. You need your 18.5-foot-long thing to be 18.5 drawing units long. Scale the entire drawing down to 1/12 size, and your drawing unit will then represent a foot, such a thing will be that long, and Offsetting by 2.5 units will do it by 2.5 feet. Define a Dimension Style using decimal units with a foot-mark suffix [because there isn't a built-in mode that does feet with the foot mark except in feet-and-inches].
Alternatively, you could [but I don't recommend it] leave your drawing unit at an inch, and use a Measurement scale [in the Primary Units tab in the Dimension Style dialog box] of 1/12, so that the 222-unit-long measurement will come out as 18.5 units. Again, you'll need to use decimal units and add the foot mark as a suffix. I don't recommend it because it will only "work" inside Dimensions -- things like the LIST or DIST commands will still give results in inches, and that thing will still be 222 units long, not 18.5.
Kent Cooper, AIA